James Bard (Oct 4, 1815 - Mar 26, 1897) was a marine artist of the 19th century. He is known for his paintings of watercraft, particularly of steamboats. His works are sometimes characterized as naïve art. Although Bard died poor and almost forgotten, his works have since become valuable. Bard had a twin brother, John and they collaborated on earlier works.
During his life, Bard painted or made drawings of at least 3,000 vessels, including probably every steamer built at New York during his active life as an artist. Bard's works included common features intended to please patrons. Sailboats were shown underway with all sails up. Steamboats likewise were shown underway, with numerous flags flying, including a large one bearing the vessel's name. There would often be inscriptions about the ship and its owner. In one example, James and John Bard painted for their patron Cornelius Vanderbilt, then one of the wealthiest men in the United States, a portrait of the Hudson River steamboat Cornelius Vanderbilt racing the Oregon. Although Oregon won the race, the Vanderbilt is shown in the lead, and all that is visible of the Oregon is the prow and the flag on the jackstaff.
Bard went to great lengths to get the details of the vessel correctly, including personally measuring the vessel in question. Preliminary drawings exist for some vessels. It was customary at that time for marine artists to paint multiple works of a single vessel, which could be different as to the background and other details, depending on orders from patrons. Bard followed this practice, often painting the same vessel multiple times.
As Bard grew older, photography became increasingly used for marine as well as other subject areas, and steamboats themselves declined in importance in relation to the railroads. During Bard's life, Stanton, was the only artist who acknowledged Bard's influence, stating in his 1895 book American Steam Vessels that Bard was a gentleman who had begun the work of steamboat portraiture before 1830, and "to him the maritime world owes gratitude for his contributions to it of correct likenesses of many of the noted steamboats of early days".
Most of the Bard works were done for persons in the steamboat or maritime trades, and as these persons died or went out of business, the works were lost or destroyed. In the earlier part of the 20th century, historians began relying on the surviving Bard works as references. Three of these historians, Francis F.C. Bradlee, George W. Murdock, and Edwin M. Eldredge collected steamboat art and other materials, and they came to acquire many of the Bard works. In time, all three of these collections came into the hands of museums, in particular the Eldredge collection, the most extensive one, went to the Mariners' Museum in Newport News in 1940.
In 1924, for the first time since 1842, two of Bard's works were featured at an art exhibition. After the 1897 obituary, nothing was written about the Bards as artists until 1949, when Alexander Crosby Brown and Harold Sniffen wrote an article published in Art in America which focused on the output of the Bard brothers, the accuracy of their drawings, and their importance for marine historians.
http://hisour.com/artist/james-bard/
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